A volunteer loads water onto a bus in Middletown. Dozens combed the streets of the northern part of the township on Friday, offering assistance to residents. / Staff photo by Kevin Penton

Written by

Kevin Penton

@KevinPentonAPP

MIDDLETOWN — As the three volunteers approached the house, the radio blasting in the garage began playing the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine.”

Bob Cebalo looked around at the mud and the piles of debris cleared out of homes in the Port Monmouth section of town, and nodded his head.

“Sounds about right,” said Cebalo, of Hazlet, before approaching a man in the garage and asking him whether he needed help.

Cebalo and dozens of other volunteers fanned out through the streets of northern Middletown on Friday, offering food and other types of material assistance to those hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy.

The help is needed: several homes in Port Monmouth are missing parts of their exterior walls, exposing water-logged versions of everyday life: a soaked mattress lay next to an overturned nightstand in one house.

Organized by Middletown officials, the volunteers met at Croydon Hall, which serves as a community center in Leonardo, and loaded several buses full of cleaning supplies, food and household items such as garbage bags. They then split up and combed the streets of Belford, Leonardo, North Middletown and Port Monmouth.

“People are telling us they really need bleach, they want to get that smell of dampness out of their homes,” said Bob Banta, a Middletown employee organizing the volunteer effort. Those wishing to contribute or volunteer may call the township at 732-615-2260.

Upon reaching Port Monmouth, which is hemmed in by Raritan Bay, Pew’s Creek and Compton Creek, most of the volunteers spread out in one direction, knocking on doors and letting residents know where they could go to get what they might need.

Cebalo and his nephew, Adrian Davalos, took off in the other direction, walking with Matt Desposito.

Desposito said he lives in Belford, but on the “dry side” of Route 36, which is local parlance for the area south of the highway. Compared to the destruction he walked through on Friday, Desposito said he fared relatively well.

“I’m extremely lucky,” said Desposito, who has been volunteering with Middletown for several days. “That’s my nature. I don’t just sit around.”

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The three men knocked on the doors of homes directly across the street from the marshlands that lead up to Compton Creek. As Sandy approached last week, Main Street was impassable, overwhelmed by floodwaters several feet deep.

While several residents were around on Friday, running generators and trying to make sense of the mess, many homes were vacant. For several stretches, the loudest sound was the crunch of the gravel beneath the men’s boots.

The man playing the Beatles, Mike Finnegan, said he was helping his elderly neighbor gut the first floor of her home. A contractor had quoted her $3,000 to do part of the job, but Finnegan, who is unemployed, told her he’d do it for a couple hundred bucks.

“I’ve got to keep busy,” said Finnegan, 25, who has lived in his Park Avenue home his entire life. Finnegan would like to rent a trailer, park it outside his home and rebuild the house himself.

After the three volunteers walked off in search of other residents, Finnegan’s radio began playing the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.” It repeats the line “nothing’s gonna change my world.”